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Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. is a BrainPOP Social Studies video that launched on March 22, 2006. Summary In Washington, D.C., Tim and Moby are talking about Martin Luther King Jr. on a boat passing Lincoln Memorial. Appearances * Moby * Tim Quiz * Martin Luther King, Jr./Quiz Transcript * Martin Luther King, Jr./TranscriptCategory:BrainPOP Episodes FYI Quotables Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspirational man. Here are some quotations attributed to him! “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.” “We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” “Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” “Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” In Depth During the early 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most segregated, or racially separated, cities in America. Only 10 percent of the African-American community was registered to vote, and African Americans were barred from holding most jobs. When Fred Shuttlesworth, a local minister, began challenging the legality of the city’s policies, his home and church were bombed, he was jailed, and his petitions were literally thrown into the trash by the mayor. So Shuttlesworth contacted Dr. King, who quickly moved into the city. Dr. King’s strategy involved confronting the Birmingham establishment with non-violent tactics such as sit-ins, boycotts, voter registration drives, and marches. The city’s commissioner of public safety, Bull Connor, was notorious for using excessive force to enforce segregation laws. King hoped that Connor would overreact to their campaign. If he did, and the media took notice, the whole world would see the brutal injustice of Southern segregation. Connor did exactly that. Over the course of a few weeks in May 1963, he filled the Birmingham jail with thousands of civil rights protestors, including Dr. King (pictured). When the jail was full, Connor began clearing protestors—many of whom were children—off the streets with high-pressure fire hoses. He also unleashed fierce police dogs on them. As King predicted, the media took notice, and images of the violence appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on TV across the globe. Still, the protestors kept coming. Faced with a crisis, the leaders of Birmingham had no choice but to meet the demands of the civil rights movement. It was a defining moment in American history. Did You Know? Over his lifetime, and even after his death, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won many prestigious honors and awards. Here are some of them! Pacem in Terris Award (1963): Given by Pope John XXIII, this award recognizes people of good will and peace. (“Pacem in Terris” means “Peace on Earth” in Latin.) Nobel Prize for Peace (1964): At the time of his award, King was the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which is bestowed by the government of Norway. Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights (1968): King received this award from the government of Jamaica shortly after his death. Grammy Award, Best Spoken Word Recording (1971): This award was given for a recorded speech entitled “Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.” Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977): American President Jimmy Carter honored King with this award, the highest civilian award in the U.S. Honorary Degrees: King was the recipient of more than 20 honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities both in the U.S. and abroad. Laws And Customs Every year, you get a day off of school for Martin Luther King Day, which is observed on the Monday closest to King’s birthday (January 15). The story of the holiday’s creation began shortly after King’s death, when Congressman John Conyers of Michigan introduced a bill proposing a federal holiday be created in King’s honor. The bill was greatly supported by labor unions across the country, which began demanding that their employers give them King’s birthday off. This was a fitting tribute, since King collaborated closely with unions during his lifetime. (In fact, he was lending his support to a strike in Memphis when he was killed.) One by one, unions’ demands were met by their employers, and during the 1970s, city and state governments across the U.S. began giving workers Martin Luther King Day off as well. However, the movement stalled during the late 1970s. The power of unions in general had weakened, and Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina stalled the bill in Congress, claiming that King was unworthy of a federal holiday. Undaunted, the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta started a petition to get the holiday recognized. Recording star Stevie Wonder helped popularize the issue by dedicating his hit song “Happy Birthday” to King, and in 1983, King’s widow Coretta Scott King presented Congress with 6 million signatures. That year, the bill finally passed in Congress, and it was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan (pictured). However, it was not until 2000 that every state in the Union recognized it as a paid holiday for all employees. FYI Comic there is none. Primary Source Oberlin College was the first college in the United States to regularly admit black students. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Oberlin in 1957, shortly after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Three Newspaper Articles on a 1957 Martin Luther King Speech HEADLINE: King Discusses Negro's Status ARTICLE 1 TITLE: Explains Use of Non-Violence For Overcoming Oppression by Matt Von Baeyer TEXT: Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking on the topic "Justice without Violence," made the initial observation that it is impossible to view the current American scene without noting the serious crisis in race relations. Dr. King is minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, and leader of the recent bus boycott in Montgomery. Speaking yesterday afternoon in First Church, Dr. King went on to claim that the determined resistance of reactionary elements such as the white citizens' councils together with the radical change in the Negro's evaluation of his nature and destiny have helped to account for today's critical situation. Willing To Sacrifice As a result of his new-found sense of dignity and self-respect, the Negro is willing to sacrifice and suffer until segregation disappears. His conviction "springs from the same deep longing for dignity, which motivates al the world's oppressed peoples seeking freedom, justice, and equality," Dr. King remarked. Dr. King then asked "How will this struggle against the forces of injustice be waged?" Because Dr. King regards the use of violence as futile, he advocates a policy of non-violence which Gandhi so successfully employed in freeing the Indian people. ARTICLE 2 TITLE: Martin Luther King's Afternoon Lecture by Matt Von Baeyer TEXT: Dr. King wished to make it very clear that the method of no-violence is "not a method of cowardice, stagnant passivity" but rather a means to active and dynamic spiritual aggression. Aiming to gain the friendship of his opponent, the non-violent resistor purposely avoids using the tactics of conquest and humiliation, Dr. King said. Eliminate Forces of Evil Instead of attacking individuals who are victims of circumstances, the method of passive resistance seeks to eliminate the forces of evil. Backing up this point, Dr. King commented that "the tension is not between races, but between justice and injustice." Just as external violence is no part of Dr. King's approach to the problem of segregation, internal resentment cannot be utilized to transform hate into love. The non-violent method embodies the kind of love involving the principles of understanding and good will which must ultimately lead to world brotherhood, insisted Dr. King. Working from a firm faith in the future, Dr. King feels that man will triumph in his struggle for brotherhood because God is on the side of justice. Remembering that "goodness never retaliates with violence," the passive resistor must always have faith in the ultimate success of his peaceful method. Violence can only serve to slow down the processes of justice and perhaps even halt progress completely, Dr. King concluded. It is Dr. King's hope that the American public does not consider the Alabama bus boycott an end in itself, for he regards it only as a preliminary step towards total reconciliation. In answer to several questions from students as to the efficacy of non-violent methods in situations which would seem to admit only of solution by violence, Dr. King replied that resultant bitter feeling would cancel out any gains of violence. ARTICLE 3 TITLE: Traces History, Development; Cites New Sense of Dignity By Carol Throop TEXT: "The Negro has escaped from the bondage of slavery, passed through the wilderness of the 'separate but equal' philosophy, and is now entering the promised land of complete integration," asserted Dr. Martin Luther King in his introductory remarks on "The New Negro in the New South." Dr. King spoke as part of a panel of Dr. Leslie Fishel, Alumni Secretary and Lecturer in the History of the Negro, Prof. George Simpson, chairman of the sociology department, and moderated by Prof. Robert Tufts of the economics department, Alumni Secretary and Lecturer in the History of the Negro, Prof. George Simpson, chairman of the sociology department, and moderated by Prof. Robert Tufts of the economics department. Asserting that an understanding of this New Negro is impossible without a knowledge of the Negro's history in the United States, Dr. King divided the development of the Negro into three phases: The period up to the Civil War, years of complete slavery for the Negro; the period of the "separate but equal" doctrine of the Supreme Court that extended up to the Supreme Court's 1954 decision on segregation; and the period which began with that decision and which will eventually become a period of complete integration and equality. Dred Scott Dr. King used the Dred Scott decision, which stated that Negroes were property, not citizens, to typify the attitude toward the Negro during the first of these three periods. The wrong which was done during this era was rationalized by many Southerners with the argument that Biblical authority proved the inferiority of the Negro, Dr. King said. During the second period, the Negroes lived in a segregated society, unable to fight against it because their long physical slavery had led to a paralysis of mental slavery, Dr. King contended. He emphasized that cultural and economic advances on the part of the Negro community came wit the gradual move from the planation to urban centers. These advances have given the Negro self-confidence, a new sense of dignity, and the incentive to evaluate his own nature and destiny. This evaluation, he said, has led to the most progressive era, and put the New Negro on the threshold of this era. Fishel Queries Dr. Fishel questioned the existence of a New South, contending that in spite of a more beneficial attitude toward integration in the South the over-all picture is still disillusioning. He pointed out that the position of the Southern liberal is desperate; he is unable, because of economic and social repercussions, to stand up for what he may privately believe. When asked by Professor Simpson to define the term New South, Dr. King observed that it is not yet an actuality, but is just coming into existence. The most notable aspect of this New South has ben the disappearance of what was once the Solid South, he said. Even individual communities are now divided on issues which were once agreed upon by the whole of this section of the country. The New Negro, Dr. King concluded, will not accept "separate but equal" as a substitute for complete desegregation, because inequality is inherent in separation. The Negro in America today will accept nothing which is not a step toward complete integration. The Oberlin Review, Oberlin, Ohio. February 8, 1957.Category:Social Studies Category:African-American History Category:Famous Historical Figures Category:U.S. History Category:2006 Episodes Category:Episodes in March Category:The Law Category:Economics Category:March 2006 Episodes